


On the litter-coated platform

by Nina16000



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Ambiguity, Angst, M/M, One Shot, Sebaek - Freeform, Symbolism, Train Stations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 13:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13167537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina16000/pseuds/Nina16000
Summary: Still, he comes to say goodbye to Sehun.





	On the litter-coated platform

There’s no ounce of emotion pulling at their faces as they stand on the litter-coated platform.

It's not like there needs to be, Baekhyun supposes. It's just them.

Yes, on section A on the far end, there is an old man kissing his wife's hand and then her cheeks. Behind them he can hear some children giggling amongst the clicking of a pram being adjusted.

Apart from that, there's no one else.

More noticeable than the vague absence of people around them and even those crystalline, low-lidded eyes, is the trash that pools at their feet and in the eroded grooves of the concrete floor. There are fading receipts and leaflets whose wrinkles stand out like white veins. There are lost gloves, torn-off price tags and trampled cigarettes whose ashes spill onto the floor like blood.

"The train is coming soon" says Sehun, shrugging away his sleeve to check his leather-band watch, the one Baekhyun bought him five months ago. Baekhyun notes the large clock blinking bright orange digits directly above them.

"That's true" he replies. He doesn't have any words scripted in his head, Sehun probably doesn't either. In a bond that had been as enduring as theirs, not even apologies were rehearsed.

Baekhyun drags the tip of his dirtied trainers across the ground, watching as granules of grit snowball into larger clumps. These are the Asics trainers he wore when they jogged together at 11 in the morning along the cloudy green ponds and past the bowing evergreen trees.

Many times, while they were running, Baekhyun would compare the more disfigured and top-heavy trees to Sehun 'when his hair turns white'. Sehun would point at Baekyun and then to the piles of slime and rotting wood by the ponds and reply 'sometimes I can't tell the difference'.

At some point, they jogged by the ponds and the trees for the last time.

Baekhyun wants to say that he'd definitely go for another one if he had the chance, but he's always had the chance. It's not the opportunity that's stopped him, maybe the decision was wordlessly bilateral.

And now, as Baekhyun eyes those crumpled papers resting around his feet, he considers that perhaps many recent changes were silently agreed on. Less meet-ups, movie-binges, midnight texting, partnering and less morning jogs. The losses were never upfront, they were gentle realizations that came to mind only when Baekhyun would be sliding into his trainers for a jog that wasn’t happening.

"It's always been so empty at this time of week." Baekhyun remarks, "I guess it saves us the headaches from those schoolkids".

Sehun hums in agreement and fiddles with his duffle bag. He sniffs harshly as a sudden breeze tickles their noses. With it comes the scent of mint from the thicket encasing the railway and petrol from the car park. There is a patch of dark grey clouds that is moving much quicker than the blanketed white sky behind. In the distance, a car horn blares angrily amidst a gentle drone from the nearby motorway.

Some of the rubbish near their feet shift slightly, a stained tissue floats off the edge of the platform and onto the railway.

"Don't forget to tell your new friends who's the real OG here” He chuckles with a nervous voice crack. Something about the tone of his own voice sets his teeth grinding, he can’t remember the last time he’d been nervous around Sehun. Even in their last few months together when everything chilled slightly, there hadn’t ever been a filter over his mouth.

He watches carefully as the other rolls his shoulders. They’re standing about a meter apart, he notes. Between them, lying on the ground, is a yellowing leaflet that advertises a ‘2-for-1’ meal at the nearest bar.

“Of course, I’ll tell all my friends who are definitely mafiosos that they should stay clear of _that_ Baekhyun” Sehun says, rolling his eyes. Sarcasm was always in his blood, it made their jokes more hilarious and their fights a lot more difficult to handle.

Baekhyun wants to sigh wistfully and rest his head on Sehun’s tall shoulder and mutter quietly that he doesn’t want him to go. It’d be very cinematic, he thinks. However, it wouldn’t suit them; Baekhyun is more likely to end up biting Sehun’s shoulder and smirk as the other slowly cringes the embarrassment away. He doesn’t.

He’s seen the famous ‘ _Train-station Goodbye’_ in so many movies and read it in so many books. He remembers it from the Muppet which he forced Sehun to watch with him, or countless times in Pokémon which he stumbled on Sehun watching. From the huge number of rom-coms he’s watched, Baekhyun should be a maestro in the composition of farewells.

Life never works like the movies, but movies are modelled off how life works, there is at least some semblance. So Baekhyun should have some knowledge of what to say or do. The old couple in section A surely know how to exchange their parting words; now they are holding each other’s hands and whispering loving words to each other.

As a small wind drifts in from the end of the station where the rails stretch far into the horizon, Baekhyun is struck by the mild worry that there isn’t enough time and that by now there should be tears wetting the dirty papers on the ground. Baekhyun hasn’t cried in front of Sehun for months though.

There isn’t much to say. No ounce of emotion.

Still, he comes to say goodbye to Sehun. On this litter-coated platform.

Maybe it’s him truly expressing from his soul, even if muscles and faces can’t show it, or maybe it’s Baekhyun’s ghost from a while ago, trying to perform the parting scene that should match the quirks and gags their relationship held. Both scenarios should have more pathos permeating these strained silences, but there isn’t. No matter how many parallel realities he tries to simulate in his head, there’s nothing he can do to create something that isn’t there.

The train arrives.

Like vibrant leaves on a windy autumn day, filthy papers and plastics swirl around them, brushing their faces and scattering throughout the station. Empty plastic bottles roll along the bumpy floor while a single ragged glove trembles slightly in amidst the hissing and screeching of the train wheels.

“Oh lovely” Sehun mutters, trying to flick off a wet, browning tissue that has landed on his coat. Baekhyun’s mouth twitches.

A door, streaked with rust, stops directly in front of them as the train screeches to a halt. For Baekhyun, it’s all happening too quickly – but it’s always been like that. He’s never noticed when things are changing, only when the difference is stark in his face.

He shifts on his feet, “Well, I guess this is it then”. Sehun moves his gaze from the door to Baekhyun, and Baekhyun suddenly feels a tug at his throat like there’s an iron weight hanging from it. Those clear, enigmatic eyes, the ones that send shivers down his spine, suddenly pierce into his own as though they were picking apart Baekhyun’s soul.  

He’s searched up the word; _canthus_ – where the upper and lower eyelid meet at the corners of the eye. Baekhyun’s never said it but he likes to think that Sehun’s sharp-but-strangely-innocent black eyes are Nature’s ultimate craft, perfectly curved with a delicate fold of his eyelids and the soft flick of his eyelashes.

And now, Baekhyun feels like the world around him will crumble to bits if he breaks that gaze.

He reaches out and lightly pats Sehun on the arm, “Go. I’ll miss you”

Sehun takes a step forward and then stops, expression tensing slightly. The moment passes, and his face relaxes into a neutral stare.

“Text me, yeah?”

Baekhyun briefly smiles, an awkward thinning of the lips which he gives to strangers on the street. “Of course”

There’s a scraping as the door slides open, Sehun shuffles in, squeezing his duffle bag to his chest and ducking under the door to avoid hitting his head. Baekhyun wants to tease him, to cry out a heart-felt expression of jest and fondness. He doesn’t.

An empty bag floats in front of him like tumbleweed. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the old man pressing his hand to one of the windows of a carriage in section A, nodding repeatedly.

The door slides shut.

Baekhyun looks carefully at the windows, trying to see through the reflection of the cloudy sky and of his own blurred visage. He sees a figure walking through the aisle, past a few nodding heads. The figure stops, looks at the ticket in his hand, swings off the duffle bag and drops onto the chair. Sehun’s face appears behind the muddy windows.

Baekhyun feels something erupt in his chest, slow but profound like red-hot, runny lava oozing out of a shield volcano or perhaps his own heart. He looks to the pile of crushed cigarettes near one of the columns, at their ashes strewn on the ground, and then back to Sehun.

He almost gasps as he locks eyes with Sehun’s. Baekhyun feels something clawing against his skin, wanting to burst out of its cage, wanting to reach through the glass and pull Sehun back to his side. Nothing happens, only a jerk of his fingers.

There is no ounce of emotion pulling at their faces. They just stare at each other, expressions as blank as the cloudy skies above them.

The train begins to move, slowly but surely. There is hissing, shrieking from the wheels and the distant murmuring of an announcement from the speakers. Baekhyun is too entranced in Sehun’s gaze to bother.

Sehun moves further and further away. Baekhyun does not follow. With each carriage that whooshes by, more pieces of rubbish are swept into the air and Baekhyun feels more and more of himself being tugged away. There’s an invisible rope connecting him and the train, wrapped tightly around his thumping heart.

Eventually, the windows are blotted out by the reflections of the grey clouds.  Some of the litter chases the train, swirling feebly in the dying wind. Baekhyun hopes that least one receipt has magically stuck onto the surface of the train.

The carriages chug away into the distance, past the car parks and the thicket. Soon enough, Baekhyun has to squint to see the wheels rolling and then the train is no longer a train, it is a shrinking spot in the horizon and then it is nothingness.

He lets out a long-held breath and digs his hands into his pockets. The rubbish lies still on the concrete floor. Some pieces have vanished, the ‘2-for-1’ leaflet nowhere to be seen. The old man is gone as well.

There is a bottlecap teetering over the edge of the station. He takes two steps forward and nudges it over the ledge. A quiet clink is heard as the cap bounces off the ballast, quickly overshadowed by more honking from the car park. However, Baekhyun hears the echoes blast dauntingly in his ears like he’s in a massive hollow, the sounds becoming more distorted with each reverberation.

He turns and walks to one of the metal chairs. He sits down on the frigid surface and stares poignantly at the crumpled booklet in front of him, lying on the ground like a rotting corpse. Something wells up in his throat and he tries to swallow it back down.

There was more lost than just a friend and probably not even a text could revive it. But Baekhyun can’t continue to ignore that shadowy notion that crawls over his shoulders, that perhaps things had been decided a long time ago.

Quietly, his small sobs escape the hands covering his mouth and he slides off the chair and keels over on the litter-coated platform.


End file.
